Ballots to remain uncounted in MI and Stein blocked in Philly. Guest: Election integrity, law expert Paul Lehto says this proves 'only option is to get it right on Election Night'. Also: Trump taps climate denier, fossil-fuel tool for EPA...

AP and Fox "News" (and thus, the White House) is reporting that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will be "stepping down." The man responsible for choosing him for the roll and keeping him in that post has not yet announced that he will have the decency to do the same. He should.

After he steps down, IF he steps down, first order of business: Get the troops their armour, right the Christ now, and hold the first hearings on why they had to go without for so long. Let Murtha chair those hearings.

Charlie,
Right, it WAS just a few days ago! And they already have his replacement apparently. On Al Franken's show it was just reported that bush actually SAID (today, I guess) that he "couldn't tell the TRUTH" when he said rummy would be staying...because...something incoherent about "letting down the troops right before the election" or some such. Wow. So he can't even sack someone without lying about it.

This day will go down in history as a day - written about many, many years from now - that America avoided a military coup. Someone on the inside, way high up is/was ready to testify against Rumsfeld and connect his strategic involvement in 9/11, the Iraq War/Middle East (Pipeline) Redesign, and what would have happen under his design with the powers of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, in the efforts to turn over our country into a dictatorship.

Thankyou, thankyou everyone who helped make this happen! It felt like Christmas morning for me when I woke up today. What an amazing toy to behold tucked under the tree. A democratic house AND senate. Just what I always wanted!
Thankyou! Thank you! Thank you!

Hmm... I'm glad that Bush named Gates right away. I was immediately concerned when I heard that if there was going to be some sort of scheme involving Lieberman being appointed his replacement, and then the Republican governor of Connecticut naming a Republican to replace Lieberman with, which would give the Republicans control of the Senate again with Cheney being the deciding vote.

That's interesting about Hastert now too. If they try to pick someone that's "clean" to replace him NOW instead of going with Boehner, look OUT! Perhaps that's a prelude to both Bush and Cheney resigning in the lame duck session to get this "clean" (and unimpeachable) guy put in as president before Pelosi becomes third in line after new congress starts up.

Bush and Cheney probably don't want to give up their power, but if they had a choice between resigning now and later being pardoned by "Mr. nice guy" (ala Gerald Ford), or waiting to later to be impeached and having noone in the administration get pardoned by a "heartless" Pelosi, you know what they'll pick.

Robert Gates is a career Soviet analyst and former Deputy Director of the CIA who was wrong about what CIA analyst Harold Ford described as `the central analytic target of the past few years: the probable fortunes of the USSR and the Soviet European bloc.' And I believe that the committee report points out one possible reason why the CIA failed to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union. According to testimony, Mr. Gates was busy pursuing hypotheses and making unsubstantiated arguments attempting to show Soviet expansion in the Third World, instead of looking for or paying attention to facts that pointed in the opposite direction. Why? Why, as Mentor Moynihan has pointed out, was the CIA able to tell Presidents everything about the Soviet Union except the fact that it was falling apart?

Mr. Gates was also wrong about the Soviet threat to Iran in 1985. The 1985 Special National Intelligence Estimate on Iran stressed possible Soviet inroads into Iran. Gates admits that the analysis was an anomaly. It was a clear departure from previous analyses and almost immediately proven wrong by subsequent events. Gates was involved in preparing that analysis. According to Hal Ford, whose testimony the nominee never refuted, Gates leaned heavily on the Iran Estimate, in effect, `insisting on his own views and discouraging dissent.' What was the result? The 1985 estimate was skewed and contributed to the biggest foreign policy debacle of the Reagan administration, the sale of arms to Iran.

This administration has NEVER put its actual preferred choice up for nomination for anything , first.

They ALWAY put up a strawman to see which way the winds blows, take all the heat on thie initial candidate, then put up their ACTUAL preferred candidate for easy approval. WE'RE DEALING WITH KARL ROVE FOR CHRISSSAKE!

Remember Bernard Kerrick being nominated for Director of Homeland Security?

Remember how it was subsequently revealed that he had all kinds of problems in his past that woud preclude his confirmation? Remember being bewildered why these revelations were not known in advance of his nomination via a simple background check? They knew - and they released the problems at exactly the time of their choosing.

What followed that?

Chertoff was put forth for approval, and he was approved UNANIMOUSLY, despite his dual (Israeli) citizenship and loyalties (AIPAC/MOSSAD MOLE).

Remember when Bush's White House attorney, Harriett Miers was SAID TO BE Bush's first choice to replace Judge Sandra Day O'Connor?

John Roberts subsequently breezed through the approval process once Bush withdrew the Miers nomination.

Is this the same game?

Does Bush REALLY expect this Cold Warrior, Robert Gates, to be approved?

NOT A CHANCE!

Who is he REALLY looking to install in Rumsfeld's position?

JOE LIEBERMAN.

Who will Liebermen subsequently appoint to take his Senate Seat once approved to head up the Defense Department?

The Winds of change are blowing strong, America just took a giant step backwards from fascism. Then there's Rumsfield " Cutting and Running ", boy is that the icing on the cake? Don't be blinded by Rumsfield falling on his sword, probably by request from KKKarl.
They eat their own you know. So all those Repugnant Party members on the fringe, watch your backs, the big guys will do anything to hold power.
I drew a Democratic Victory cartoon last night, it's up on my website now;

Wouldn't it be enlightening to hear that Lay knew for a fact that 9/11 was going to happen as the pretext for the war plan which he clearly had knowledge of prior to 9/11?

Why would you sit around countless energy planning meetings dividing up the oil fields of Iraq in advance of 9/11 unless there were a plan in place to make it possible?

Such a plan would by necessity be a war plan, and this war plan was actually in place prior to 9/11.

Surely any good war plan requires at its core a starting point, a trigger if you will that provides a good "cover story" to implement it. Clearly you can't just go around invading countries without a good reason...you need to be attacked first, then retaliate.

Was 9/11 simply part of the war plan?

Why wouldn't it have been?

You can't hit the "GO" button without a pretext.

9/11 was the pretext for the invasion of the Middle East - all by design.

CAN YOU SAY COVERUP?

Remember how it was Andersen Consulting which took the brunt of the legal retribution for the Enron debacle? Michael Chertoff was responsible for that. He put them out of business:

Andersen attorneys thought Chertoff was asking too much and said the firm would be better off going to trial.

Chertoff then warned the Andersen team that if there was a trial, he would play to win. His prosecutors would take "head shots" at Andersen, Chertoff said.

" sale of arms to Iran "
I wonder if this will be turn out to be the same as " Amerika Armed Iraq .
I wonder if China and Russia would be stop selling parts to Iran to service military equipment ? hmmmmm

" we spent the Reagan years supporting, supplying, and training them "
I wonder if the intelligence agencies of France , Russia , UK , etc etc had anything to do with Iraq and other world problems ?

defendingliberty.com/iraqweapons.htm
United States supplied 1% of the total , Russia , France and China 82%
Italy does not register only because land mines are so inexspensive .
"Lt. Col. Duke Deluca, noting that the mines had been made in Italy, said, "Europeans are antiwar, but they are pro-commerce."

" Iraq has identified Germany as the country whose companies did most to help Baghdad in its drive to acquire weapons of mass destruction, said a German newspaper "

{incomplete link removed by Kira}
" I have no hesitation in saying that we must consider giving the Arab side a large enough force, including a large enough nuclear force...That is the policy my country (France) pursued in the 1970s when it gave Iraq a nuclear force. "
I find it odd how many people give great importance to the picture of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam while ignoring the hundreds of other pictures of politicians " making nice " with Saddam .images.google.ca/images?svnum=10&hl=en&lr=&nojs=1&q=chirac+saddam etc etc

{Please use use www.tinyurl.com for LONG LINKS to avoid stretching column width of Bradblog. edited by Kira}

...and don't fall for Bush being all "nicey nicey"...he's just being that way, because he knows he doesn't control congress anymore. He changed on a DIME in one day...Mr. Career Politician. He's the same fucker who wiretapped, ripped Habeus Corpus, lied us into war, ruined our country. I say, impeach him.

Notice he's talking about interior decorators to Nancy Pelosi? I'm not falling for that shit!!! Impeach him! Is it true, John Conyers took impeachment off the table? That's what Ralph Nader said on Democracy NOW! today...

I still think all these guys should go to jail, and I still think our voting system stinks. If a Dem victory changed your mind, why were you ever here in the first place??? That's against everything that was ever said here and at blackboxvoting.org. That would mean we question the integrity of our voting system ONLY if we don't like the results!!!

Actually? Bush's "nicey nicey" today made me SICK...because I KNOW he was only doing it because the Republicans lost control of congress...thus proving he's very very slick...he's a born liar, a born politician, and a born "used car salesman"...

Gates is an immensely evil man, but the pukes have Kissyface as a trump card - if the dims dare to prevent Gates from taking over as secdef, then they'll get Kissyface in the Pentagon and a spandy-new puke senator in CT. These doods are really BAD MEN, and we're fools if we don't go for their throats now, when it at least looks like we might have kicked them in the shins pretty good.

I think it's funny that he lied about Rummy's leaving to prevent looking like anything political was going on.. yet if that dipshit HAD said he fired Rummy -before- the election, there might have been more folks that were on the fence falling back to the Pug side. Rummy and this botched war was very disenheartening to a LOT of Pugs, and showing that (even in the last hour) change was going to be happening -anyway- could have brought back several Pugs..

As it is, the Right-Wing-Nut-Jobs just lost their strangle hold on our country (though, they still have Mr. 1 Veto there, to block any 'real' change for the better).

Donald Rumsfuck, Has 5 houses & he is proud to own a vacation house that was previously owned by a slaveholding family made infamous by a classic of American letters from 1845. "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass"